How do I file bankruptcy in Southern California and what type should I file?
by Author on Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 | 2 Comments
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If you want to spend the most amount of money possible, file with an attorney.
They charge $1500-$3000 and then you have to pay the $300 filing fee.
To file with the court, it costs $300. If you need help preparing the documents, then you can pay someone to do that for you.
That cost about $700-$800.
That will save you a lot of money and you can find reliable people to create the documents with all of your information.
Just beware of the fake softwares out there on the internet that you can buy. some of them just send you pdf & word docs which you can get for free on the bankruptcy website.
Chapter 7 is the way you would want to go. You wipe out your debts and don’t have to pay anything.
Chapter 13, you have to pay everything back and still get a bad mark on your credit.
You should call them, cancel your cards and have them reduce your payments and stop your interest.
Make an appointment with a good bankruptcy attorney. Most offer one free or very low cost appointment to take a look at your individual situation and advise you (a) whether you can file, (b) whether you should file, (c) if so, what chapter you should file, and (d) whether there might be any other viable choices for you. The advice you will get in person from a good bankruptcy attorney will be FAR better, more reliable, and more accurate than ANY info you could possibly get anywhere on the Internet, including here.
In Southern California, from what I know, the attorney fee for filing an uncomplicated Ch 7 will probably run somewhere between $1500 and $2000.
IF you truly have a completely uncomplicated Ch 7 (see an attorney first to get a real attorney’s take on this) AND you are willing to put some real time into doing some legal research (NOT just on the internet) to learn the ins and outs of filing your own case (pro se) you **MIGHT** be one of the FEW people who **MIGHT** be able to represent yourself without that posing an undue risk.
In my opinion, since the 2005 Bankruptcy Reform law (BAPCPA) VERY few people can safely file their own bankruptcy (pro se) without taking a HUGE risk. But if anybody could, it would probably be a single person filing a simple Ch 7 with essentially no assets and no other debt besides a few well defined creditors whom the debtor cannot possibly repay.
**EDITED because Y!A "coffee break" only posted partial text of my response, cutting it off in mid-sentence.